A travel mobile app for creating and adjusting your itinerary
Pivot Travel App
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Problem:
Planning an itinerary for a trip and then adhering to it can be very stressful. Even after spending hours deciding where and when to go, we are often set back by various unanticipated obstacles. How can we plan with minimum effort while visiting maximum places planned beforehand?
Case Summary
Product Team:
Me, myself, and I
My Role:
UX Designer, UX Researcher, Information Architect
Tools:
Sketch, InVision
Project Plan:
~1 month of user research followed by initial hypothesis validation, 1 month of ideation and wireframing, 1 month of prototype development
Feb-June 2019
Interactive Prototype:
View prototype here: https://invis.io/NDS52N2M5KF
App and its features are explained in detail at the end of the case report.
Product Vision
As I was reflecting on my own travel habits and preferences, I realized that travel information (i.e. any information about a place at a travel destination, voluntarily collected or received) undergoes a life cycle. This Life Cycle of Travel Information demonstrates that both planners and non-planners interact with their travel information through these 6 stages.
Exploration - User Research
1. User Interviews
To validate my hypothesis, I composed a detailed, yet open-ended questionnaire that would reveal my target users’ actions, feelings, and thoughts in each stage of the Life Cycle of Travel Information. I interviewed a total of 8 people, aged early 20s to early 30s, who travel at least 3 times a year and are not married. Responses were collected through face-to-face interviews or email distribution. I asked qualitative questions about their personality, travel style and preferences; and tried to be as specific as possible to obtain real-life examples.
I analyzed the interview results based on keywords such as “social interaction,” “recording experiences” and etc, which really helped me understand each interviewee’s motivations and pain points. Then, I summarized needs and pain points that were mentioned most frequently, as well as findings reflecting on my initial hypothesis.
2. User Survey
From the interviews, I discovered that the situation and context dictate how my interviewees make decisions and process information, regardless of whether they identify themselves as a planner or non-planner. I distributed a survey through Google Forms and received responses from 19 respondents (10 females, 9 males; aged 22-27). Below is a summary:
Survey Takeaways:
Only 10.5% prefer recommendations from Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. to recs from best friends and/or strangers with similar interests.
42.1% are willing to walk more than one hour from place to place if necessary.
When users run out of things to do, 63.2% go on SNS to get ideas, and 52.6% view a list of places to see which are near their current location.
The more imminent an event will happen in the future, respondents tend to be more inclined to plan beforehand.
Respondents determine the value of new information (i.e. recs, online, etc.) by:
63.2% - Ratings from Google/Yelp/TripAdvisor/etc.
57.9% - Photos
52.6% - Friends who have visited the place before
100 % use Google Maps when they travel, mainly to:
100% - Find directions
42.1% - Explore Nearby
3. Contextual Inquiry
Through further literature review, I was able to confirm postulations made from the survey that my target users tend to make decisions based on two main sources: 1) user-generated content (i.e. human recommendations, instagram posts, etc.) and 2) efficiency (distance x time x urgency).
Refinement - Translating user needs into solutions
I created a user persona that would serve as a benchmark to design optimal experience for my target users. Then, I matched Clara’s pain points to her motivations and brainstormed solutions that could tackle these selected pain points.
Refinement - MVP & Information Architecture
I visualized the viability of of my features by creating lo-fi wireframes. Then, I prioritized these features ranging from “Essential” to “Nice to Have” to flesh out the overall functionality of my app. Selected features were grouped into sections, which would later become tabs in the main menu.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
MVP & Feature Prioritization
Site Map
Information Architecture
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Final Solution
1. Save recommendations instantly to your app
Even though they don’t have a trip planned, users can save places attained from friends, online/offline media directly in the app. Users locate the exact geotag of the place so that no further action would be needed when they plan their trips.
2. Organize itinerary by distance and date
When users “Add a new trip,” they can start a new itinerary by pinning the locations they have saved over time. Users are recommended an itinerary based on proximity to each other, and they can “Rearrange” anytime during the trip.
3. Explore new places based on situational wants & needs
When users run out of things to do, they can explore based on their mood or situational factors like “Near My Hotel,” “Similar Places,” etc. By using the “Compare Mode,” the user is able to save time comparing and choosing from a pool of options.
Adjusting her itinerary or adding new places can be done very easily because the app automatically asks to confirm check-in to the new place. Then, she can choose to add it to her itinerary or not.
4. Validate value of a recommendation and its relevance to you
When the user searches a place of interest, the user can use the “Friends Willing to Visit” and the “Similar Places” sections as points of reference to evaluate value and relevance to her. “Similar Places” allows the user to compare the place to other locations that she has visited before, and the “Friends Willing to Revisit” offers a list of friends who noted on their itineraries that they would be willing to revisit the place.
Once a new place is added to the itinerary, it initially stands alone as a <+ card> and does not belong to a particular day until the users voluntarily <Rearrange> their itineraries. The user then can experiment with the placement of the new place in her itinerary.
5. Record your memories and share partially
Users are very selective about the information and experience they share with others. The app “Capture(s) Your Experience” for each place visited and she can choose to make it private/public and/or directly upload on Instagram Story. These series of experiences are saved under “Itinerary Highlights” and she can come back to it anytime after the trip has ended.
Check out more features!
Import from Instagram
The more places saved for a future trip, the better, right? Once they have connected the app to Instagram, the user can save geotags embedded in her friends’ Instagram Stories directly from the Pivot app. This shortens the process of “saving” and thus makes saving places a habitual practice.
Hotel Setting
The user wants to walk as much as possible and make a trip back to her airbnb/hotel without having to adjust her entire itinerary. The “Hotel Setting” helps the user arrange her itinerary based on walking distance and rearrange without hassle.
Dashboard Categories
Users want to maximize their options prior to their trips, but during the trip, they want to narrow down options pertaining to their favorite categories of places and events. Users can choose 4 shortcut categories for a particular trip to make deciding quick and easy.
Reflection
I wanted my first take on user experience to be personal, so I chose my first case study to be on the practice of traveling, which has been one of my passions for as long as I can remember. I was under great pressure to create something from scratch when I first began, but over time, I enjoyed the freedom that I was given in the process and also felt more liberated as my framework became more ingrained.
I was intrigued by how each piece of research and analysis could be responsible for the unexpected turn of events in my case study. One finding led to the inquiry of another, and this catalytic nature motivated me to understand more deeply about people’s emotions and behaviors toward traveling. This challenging, yet exciting task has also aspired me to continue applying and exploring the UX process in other problems embedded in our daily lives.
If I have a chance to revisit the work in the future, I would like to work as a team to acquire more perspectives on my analyses and conduct more usability tests on the functionality of the app to further ease and engage users’ interactions.